Thursday, June 2, 2011

Raising pigs in washington: Equipment roadtrips, hutterite colony.

[editorial note: blogger is really bugging me recently. About half the pictures I attempt to illustrate my blog with are "server rejected". Same thing with video clips. ]

Well, I'm going to say it. There's really no commercial pig activity outside of hutterite colonies in Washington State, and there's certainly no dealers for common hog equipment. Virtually everything I need I end up having to have shipped in from Iowa or other parts of the midwest.

Speaking of Hutterites, I recently toured one of their colonies, and I have to say, I have never, ever seen as much top-of-the-line farming equipment as I did there. Nor have I met a group of people who work the number of hours that the hutterites do. I had heard of Hutterites in passing, but nothing in detail. Having talked to them, and thought about it, I'm convinced that Hutterites provide serious competition for any agricultural endeavor that they set their mind to.

The colony that I toured was just about to start production of coho salmon... in ponds in the middle of MONTANA, which struck me as... well, unexpected!

What's funny is that you can find all sorts of hog equipment, and in fact, very good quality hog equipment, all over the midwest. Stainless steel feeders, gates, pens, management tools... most everything a small hog farmer needs can be found there.

So I'm on a roadtrip for the next few days; I'm driving to Iowa to pick up a load of various things I'll need for my farm. I'll see if I can't write something about the trip as I go.

I'm driving I90 from Seattle to Iowa and then back.

[just imagine a picture of a road with a semi-truck on it in the distance, overshadowed by a whole bunch of HUGE wind turbines that are being used to generate electricity all along I90 east of Ellensburg, WA. ]